


with my war stories tucked under my tongue like an exploding star

by ashers_kiss



Category: Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: (I think that sums up what I was trying to do), F/M, ladies using their appearances as weapons of their own, referenced misogyny and sexism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-01
Updated: 2013-09-01
Packaged: 2017-12-25 07:32:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,431
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/950377
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ashers_kiss/pseuds/ashers_kiss
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Carol has a routine.  Every morning, she sits in front of the mirror and applies her make-up carefully, delicately.  Deliberately.</p>
            </blockquote>





	with my war stories tucked under my tongue like an exploding star

**Author's Note:**

  * For [](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts).
  * Translation into Русский available: [Истории о моих сражениях](https://archiveofourown.org/works/1475779) by [krasnoe_solnishko](https://archiveofourown.org/users/krasnoe_solnishko/pseuds/krasnoe_solnishko)



> For [littleblackghost](http://archiveofourown.org/users/littleblackghost/pseuds/littleblackghost), again. (She's a terrible influence.)
> 
> I've been wanting to try and write something about those bloody uniforms for a while now, because I like to think that, if the filmmakers are going to _make_ them wear those dresses, those ladies are going to _own_ it.
> 
> That ended up being only a tiny piece of this, specifically, but the theme stuck. I adore Carol, and I love that she always looks so damned well put together and _sounds_ like she walked straight out of Oxford, but that she clearly takes no one's shit, and I wanted to see her turn people's assumptions against them. Because you know they have a _lot_.
> 
> I'm not sure how well I did that, but. It's what it is.
> 
> Title from [My Creative Writing Professor Told Me to Stop Writing About Love](http://jackdaws-pocketbook.tumblr.com/post/59948470444/my-creative-writing-professor-told-me-to-stop) by Caitlyn Siehl.

Carol has a routine. Every morning, she sits in front of the mirror and applies her make-up carefully, delicately. Deliberately. 

She’s lucky, she’s been told – she inherited her mother’s complexion, and the barest brush of foundation and blusher is all she needs, some colour in her cheeks. She draws attention to her eyes with thick lines and dark lashes, always her most… _striking_ feature, people used to say, smirks curling their mouths. As if they expected her to call them on what they probably thought was a terribly cutting insult. (And perhaps it had been, when she was a _child_. If they were going to try and take her down a peg or two – a phrase constantly used by her teachers at school, until her father stopped looking disappointed and started looking bored – they were going to have to try _much_ harder.) Carol learned long ago to smile at them, thank them, watch the satisfaction melt into confusion.

She wears palest pink lipstick – pale enough to not even be there (so why even bother, an ex once asked. That relationship didn’t last long, strangely enough), but filled out just as precisely as the rest. It wouldn’t do to try and detract from her eyes, after all.

Her hair is easy, she specifically chose the style for low-maintenance. She zips up her boots and smooths out any creases in her dress, checks herself over one last time. It’s a practiced routine, perfected over the years and performed by many women throughout the galaxy, she knows. It would be stupid to assume otherwise. She had seen them, copied them, adapted them.

When she was younger – much, much younger – she used to watch her mother get ready, sat behind her on the high bed. Her mother would pull faces in the mirror to make her laugh, even as she put up the long dark curls Carol always envied, applied bright red lipstick with a flick of the wrist Carol now recognises in her own rituals.

“We take the mould they force us into,” she told Carol once, pulling her up into her lap, “and we use it against them.” Her smile seemed brighter against the red, and she smeared it over Carol’s own mouth until she laughed.

That night, Carol watched from the top of the stairs, hiding behind the banister as her mother greeted her grandfather’s guests, and wondered how Dad could have left them when her mother looked so beautiful. (It took her far too long to realise who “they” were.)

Then the accident happened, and Carol was sent to her father, who frankly hadn’t a _clue_ what to do with a grieving ten year old, and packed her off to boarding school.

The first time she wore make-up on her own, it was the lipstick she had retrieved from her mother’s dressing table during the wake (one of her great-aunts scolded her for disappearing, and Carol was made to apologise to both her grandfather and her father, who looked so incredibly uncomfortable surrounded by his ex-wife’s family. The little gold tube left grooves in her palm for a whole day afterwards). One of the popular girls in the dorm informed her that red was _not_ her colour, and reported her to the principal. Carol had to suffer the indignity of a lecture on “inappropriate behaviour” and the lipstick was confiscated, locked in a drawer it only took Carol half an hour to pick during Mass the next morning. She kept the lipstick hidden after that.

She saw the looks when she walked into exams, on her first day at the Academy. When she took the podium in debates. When she defended her thesis, gave lectures. She saw the grins, slick and knowing, the occasional nudge and pointed finger. Admiral Marcus’ daughter, they whispered. Got by on daddy’s name and her own pretty looks.

Carol lifted her chin, smiled at them. Let them think what they wanted. And then she began to talk, and oh, there was nothing more satisfying, nothing more _invigorating_ than the looks on their faces, the realisation. She let that curl into her smile, seep through her voice, and met their eyes.

She thought of her mother’s gowns and opted to wear the dress, short as it was, even when Christine pointed out her legs looked just as good in the trousers. (“Hell, what am I talking about,” Christine grumbled. “You’d look good in a freaking _trash bag_.” Carol shoved her for it.)

Now, she completes her last checks, runs her hands over her hair. Because even here on the Enterprise, she sees those looks. (Most often from the science officers, but Carol won’t pretend she doesn’t know that she upset the rankings when Spock appointed her his second. She won’t pretend to be sorry, either. She’s more than proved herself capable, worthy of the position. Let them think what they want; Carol has _far_ more important things to deal with than the fact that their petty little brains cannot compute beyond the surface. So much for Starfleet’s science elite, honestly.)

Then Leonard shifts in bed, drags a pillow over his head. “You’re up too damned early.”

Carol can’t help her smile, and quite frankly wouldn’t want to. (He’s always so _grumpy_ in the mornings, it’s adorable.) She tucks her dress under herself and sits on the very edge of the bed, runs a hand up his bare back, and he arches into it. “Some of us aren’t lucky enough to be on the late start, I’m afraid.”

“I’ll write you a note.” He peeks out from under the pillow, just like a child. “I’m a doctor, they’ll have to listen to me.”

Carol laughs, because honestly, the very _idea_ is ridiculous. “If you think that would work with Spock, then you haven’t been paying attention,” she teases, and Leonard mutters something she’s sure shouldn’t be repeated in the captain’s hearing. Carol rolls her eyes and tugs the pillow away, presses a kiss to the top of his head. (Another point in the favour of such pale lipstick: smudges are practically unnoticeable. But Carol has been doing this far too long to allow anything of the sort to happen.) “I’ll see you at lunch. Try not to scare off _too_ many of the newbies today, will you?”

His, “No promises,” is only partly to make her laugh, she knows. But it does.

She’s almost out the door when he tells her, “You look amazing, you know,” and Carol’s breath catches somewhere in her chest.

She turns back to the bed, and – and Leonard isn’t even _looking_ at her, though he has turned towards her, eyes closed and no doubt fully prepared to take advantage of his extra hour in bed. Carol swallows, takes a breath. Because. Because for all he is an _awful_ flirt – Carol had begged him, _begged_ him, on their very first date, to please stop talking about his miraculous hands, she liked him already – and consistently grumpy as sin, Leonard is simply one of the _sweetest_ men she has ever met. But he _cannot_ know this, can’t _understand_ , and they’ve never discussed it, Carol wanted to give herself _time_ , time to appreciate and enjoy what has quite simply been one of the best relationships of her life. She hadn’t been ready, isn’t ready, for it to sour.

“I know,” she says, and remembers her mother’s smile as she greeted her grandfather’s guests, sharp and dangerous, “and thank you, but it – it isn’t for you.” It isn’t for _any_ of them. It’s for Carol, for her mother, the biggest “fuck you” they could ever deliver.

Leonard makes a noise which mostly sounds like a snore, but may have originally been something else. “Yeah, I know,” he says, so softly Carol almost doesn’t hear him, and her shoulders sag even as she thinks, you can’t, but _thank you_. “Doesn’t stop it from bein’ true though.”

Carol can’t quite bring herself to answer that. She stands for long enough that Leonard finally cracks open an eye to frown at her. “Y’r gonna be late.”

“I won’t.” She decides, fuck it, and dashes forward to kiss him, _fuck_ her lipstick. Just a hand at the back of his head, holding him in place, and hard press of lips, before she lets him go and runs.

She’s out of breath when she arrives on the bridge (with minutes to spare, still), and Spock raises an eyebrow at her, so similar to Leonard that she has to bite back a laugh. When Nyota winks at her behind Spock’s back, Carol grins.


End file.
